United States

Authored by George Soros, originally posted at Project Syndicate,

Well before Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, I sent a holiday greeting to my friends that read: “These times are not business as usual. Wishing you the best in a troubled world.” Now I feel the need to share this message with the rest of the world. But before I do, I must tell you who I am and what I stand for.

Submitted by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,

Natural gas prices are surging as cold weather eats into U.S. inventories, tightening the market much more quickly than many analysts had expected.

As OPEC, which currently is pumping crude at a record rate yet has managed to fool algos and "experts" into bidding up crude to multi-month highs on "promises" it will cut a little over 1 million bpd in output starting in 2017, an "agreement" which Russia and other Non-OPEC nations may or may not join depending on whether OPEC states comply with the cuts (Russia has made it very clear it won't start cutting for a a while in the new year), a problem OPEC has long hoped to avoid mentioning, let alone addressing, has emerged.

As Washington prepares to unleash new sanctions on Russia, it appears Putin won't take this laying down. If U.S. adopts new sanctions against Russia, govt in Moscow will resort to counter-measures, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warns in a website statement.

Following his earlier tweet to president-elect Trump thanking him for his "warm friendship," Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out at US Secretary of State John Kerry's speech as "biased against Israel," as he said Israel "will never have true peace" with the Arab world if it does not reach an accord based on Israelis and Palestinians living in their own states.

This follows acusations that The White House was being the vote...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLgaLSqxEgk

As Reuters reports,